Ferdinand de Saussure and the Development of Semiology

Abstract

De Saussure was born on November 26, 1857 into one of Calvinist Geneva’s prominent patrician families. For generations, the de Saussures had excelled in the sciences, producing well-known botanists and mineralogists.³ As a young boy, de Saussure was already fluent in French, German, English, Latin, and Greek, an achievement which was not unusual in cultivated families at that time. At the age of fifteen, he wrote an essay on the general system of languages (“Essai sur les langues”, 1872) which clearly showed the influence of the historical linguist Pictet, a friend of the de Saussure family. From 1873 to 1875 he attended a Gymnase. Then, in accordance with the wishes of his parents, he began studying physics and chemistry at the University of Geneva. In 1876, however, with the permission of his parents, he switched to linguistics and transferred to the University of Leipzig. In the same year he became a member of the recently founded “Société de Linguistique de Paris,” for which he wrote a series of specialized research papers.

The term semiology created by de Saussure for the general science of signs, is used throughout this article instead of the term semiotics which is today more generally accepted. On the history of these terms cf. Sebeok, 1976:47–58.